{"id":14988,"date":"2015-03-10T15:41:01","date_gmt":"2015-03-10T19:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14988"},"modified":"2015-03-10T15:41:01","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T19:41:01","slug":"generational-change-state-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14988","title":{"rendered":"generational change and the state of the press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Reading a daily newspaper is a classic\u00a0example of a generational habit. Since 2002, members of\u00a0the &#8220;Greatest Generation,&#8221; Baby Boomers, and Gen-Xers have all reduced their\u00a0reading of daily newspapers <em>a bit<\/em>. But the real reason for declining readership is generational replacement. Going back to the 1970s, we see a strong pattern that each generation reads the newspaper much less than its predecessors. That means that as succeeding\u00a0generations compose larger shares of the population, total readership falls.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14990\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/newspaper.png\" alt=\"newspaper\" width=\"515\" height=\"355\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/newspaper.png 515w, https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/newspaper-300x206.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 515px) 100vw, 515px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(Unfortunately, the GSS doesn&#8217;t provide a lengthy time series on Internet news, which would make an interesting comparison.)<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, people&#8217;s confidence in the press is not a generational story at all.\u00a0Everyone\u00a0lost confidence, with the biggest decline occurring between 1977 and 1993. The generations that were old enough to be surveyed during\u00a0those years sang in unison. Millennials were at first\u00a0slightly more confident than other generations, but now they have the same views as all the older people.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14991\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/trustthepress.png\" alt=\"trustthepress\" width=\"520\" height=\"351\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/trustthepress.png 520w, https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/trustthepress-300x202.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Basically, this is a story of an industry losing the public&#8217;s trust (fairly or not)&#8211;it is not\u00a0about the Millennials or any other generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading a daily newspaper is a classic\u00a0example of a generational habit. Since 2002, members of\u00a0the &#8220;Greatest Generation,&#8221; Baby Boomers, and Gen-Xers have all reduced their\u00a0reading of daily newspapers a bit. But the real reason for declining readership is generational replacement. Going back to the 1970s, we see a strong pattern that each generation reads the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-criticism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14993,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14988\/revisions\/14993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}